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Faculty updates 3
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Friday, April 23, and Saturday, April 24, the sawdust will fly as Paul Smith’s College hosts the 64th annual Woodsmen’s Weekend – popularly known as Spring Meet. Our men’s team will be defending its title at the event, and the women’s team will be looking to build upon last year’s third-place finish. Brett McLeod ‘03, a professor in the School of Forestry and Natural Resources, is the team’s head coach. In addition to Spring Meet, which drew 29 teams from 13 colleges and universities last year, campus will also host the Stihl Timbersports
Woodsmen’s Weekend
Collegiate Series’ northeast regional competition that weekend. The winner of that event, which is taped by ESPN for future broadcast, moves on to the Stihl collegiate finals for a shot at making the Stihl pro tour. (There’s a good chance a Smittie will win the regional competition – one has for four years running now.) Alumni participation is welcome. Limited spots are available to help with timing and judging, or swinging an axe on an alumni team; first come, first served. For more information, contact Randi Rabideau, alumni relations coordinator, at rrabideau@paulsmiths.edu or (518) 327-6253.
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es, our name has changed, from the Division of Forestry, Natural Resources and Recreation to the School of Forestry and Natural Resources. But our goals remain the same: to provide a hands-on, experiential education in natural resources and the environment. Our programs in outdoor recreation, surveying, arboriculture, and natural resources remain strong; meanwhile, our combined forestry programs drew more than 80 new first-year students in fall 2009, and the fisheries and wildlife
science program attracted more than 70 new students. In the past few months we have hired two new faculty; invested $200,000 to modernize the sawmill; invested in state-of-the-art GIS and remote sensing hardware and software; and contributed to the fields of natural resources and environmental science through faculty research and outreach. Most important, our students are still motivated, enthusiastic, inquisitive, involved, and ready to work and learn.
Many thanks to all who contributed to the fundraising campaign for the sawmill. While those efforts continue, the sawmill has already been put to good use in several courses, giving our students an even greater opportunity to participate in their own learning. Best,
Andy Egan, Dean
. Jennifer Hass (top left) and two members of the men’s B team (top right) participate in the double bucksawing event during a woodsmen’s team meet in October. ? Caitlin DeGrave, Leslie Brodbeck and Jackie June share a moment between events at a woodsmen’s meet held on campus.
Change Service Requested
P.O. Box 265, Paul Smiths, NY 12970-0265 School of Forestry & Natural Resources
Non-profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Utica, NY Permit No. 566
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PEER-REVIEWED PAPERS, BOOK CHAPTERS AND BOOKS, RECENTLY PUBLISHED OR IN PRESS
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he Eastern Arc Mountains and coastal forests of Tanzania and Kenya have been recognized as one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots, marked by high species diversity and endemism and widespread forest loss. Adjunct Dr. Elizabeth Harper and Dr. David Patrick, director of FNR’s Center for Adirondack Biodiversity, have been working with amphibian conservation in the region since 2002. Their new field guide, funded by Conservation International and completed in conjunction with Tanzanian researchers, is meant to help Tanzanians with conservation efforts and ecotourism. To that end, the Englishlanguage text provides a translation into Kiswahili, the principal language of Tanzania and Kenya. The guide will be in print by early 2010.
? Dr. Dan Kelting and Cory Laxson
have written a paper on the control of Eurasian milfoil currently in press with the “Journal of Aquatic Plant Management,” with publication expected in 2010. ? Joe Orefice has co-authored a report for the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies on the physiological ecology of carbon in forest stands. ? Dr. David Patrick has co-authored
;CGG ;>:A9 CDI:H Dr. Jorie Favreau (pictured) has worked with Dr. Celia Evans, a fellow Paul Smith’s professor, on a study to determine the habitat of snowshoe hares in the Adirondacks during the summer and winter. The study, which was completed with student help, tracked the hares with radio collars to document movements between summer and winter ranges, overlap of home ranges, and preliminary mortality rates.
Dr. David Loftis (yellow helmet) of the Bent Creek Experimental Forest in Asheville, N.C., talks with students, who stopped by on their way to the SAF national convention.
? Allen Fagan, an arboriculture and landscape management student, received a $1,000 scholarship from The Davey Tree Expert Company. ? Under the guidance of professors Sally
Bogdanovitch and Brett McLeod, forestry students John Foppert, Laura Upham, Zach Miller and Rosalie Santerre placed second in the Society of American Foresters Quiz Bowl at the annual SAF National Convention in Orlando, Fla. While at the convention, the students networked with our forestry alumni and gained valuable career insight at a reception sponsored by the college’s Office of Alumni Affairs. ? On Jan. 13, the Office of Institutional
Advancement sponsored a reception at the New York State Association of Professional Land Surveyors’ annual conference. Creating sustainable site-plan developments was one of the main themes of this year’s conference. Prof. Robert Kraatz and Dr. Jeff Walton attended the event. Printed on Recycled Gloss Text
? Dr. Jorie Favreau, program director for the fisheries and wildlife science program, brought about 20 wildlife students to the N.Y. Wildlife Society meeting. Read a newsletter with details about the meeting (students shot tranquilizer guns and other fun stuff) at http://bit.ly/5yMCiX. ? Under the leadership of new FNR instructor Joe Orefice, this fall the school’s CORE (Community Outreach through Renewable Energy) Program again helped several local needy families heat their homes by delivering firewood that was harvested, skidded, split and delivered by students during the Timber Harvesting block. The Adirondack Daily Enterprise wrote about the students’ work and dedication – read it at http://bit.ly/83Q25x. ? Our new sawmill has been installed and
has already been used in several courses, including Forest Measurements and
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A student works with the college’s draft horses as they pull timber that will be donated for firewood.
Timber Harvesting. The log deck and set works are now automated, and our new sawyer’s booth has been customized so an instructor and several students can occupy the booth at the same time. Faculty sawyers include Bob Brhel ’80, Brett McLeod ’03 and Joe Orefice. Watch a video of the sawmill at http://bit.ly/45udyY. ? Dr. Andy Egan was invited by the Part-
ners of the Americas Program to consult on an agroforestry project in the Dominican Republic, and spent two weeks there in fall 2009. Future projects there include connecting the college’s School of Forestry and Natural Resources with the forestry college in Jarabacoa, DR, with the possibility of exchanges of faculty and students between the two colleges.
CZl ;CG [VXjain Russ Aicher earned a master’s degree in environmental and resource engineering from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry in 2008. While at ESF, Russ was part of the NASA-funded FOReST (Forest Organization Remote Sensing Technology) project, in addition to heading field crews for several summers that collected forest data across the Northeast. Professionally, Russ has worked for C.T. Male Associates P.C., and was a GIS analyst for the Northeast Field Survey Project at National Grid. He completed his undergraduate work at SUNY-ESF.
Joseph Orefice was a seasonal forester for the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection’s Division of Forestry before arriving at Paul Smith’s in August 2009. He has also been a consulting forester, forest researcher, graduate teaching assistant, farmhand, and horticulturist, and has been involved with wildland fire suppression and prescription. He holds a master of forestry degree from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, as well as a bachelor’s degree from the University of Maine. Joseph’s academic interests tend to revolve around silviculture and sustainable natural resource use.
several papers currently in press: one will be published in the journal “Bioscience” on the effects of timber management on amphibian populations, and another on snake occurrences in grasslands in the “Journal of Herpetology.” In addition, Dr. Patrick will soon be publishing a field guide to amphibians in Tanzania and Kenya and a chapter on biodiversity, conservation biology and forest health in the upcoming book “Forest Health.” ? Dr. Jeff Walton has co-authored two papers that were published in 2009. One was published in the journal “Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing” on assessing forest cover; the second was published in the “Canadian Journal of Forestry Research” on predicting the eastern hemlock component of forests in the northeastern United States. ? Dr. Andrew Egan published two
peer-reviewed papers in the “Northern Journal of Applied Forestry” in 2009, about the logging communities of Maine and New York. He has two additional research papers currently in press, one with the NJAF and the other with the Journal of Forestry, expected to be published early in 2010. In addition, he published two papers in the proceedings of the IUFRO Conference on Logging and Industrial Ecology, held in Nanjing, China, November 3-7, 2009.